A B.C. mayor is recanting a story he told at a recent village meeting about a high school student dying after vaping opioid-laced juice.

Lions Bay mayor Karl Buhr told a public meeting last month that his “son’s best friend” had died after taking a single hit from a vape that was laced with fentanyl, according to meeting records.

But it turns out the story he told was an “urban myth” he heard from his son, who attends Rockridge Secondary school.

“A kid who played on his soccer team and baseball team last year — his best friend — died yesterday after taking one hit from a vape that had fentanyl in it,” he said during the meeting on Jan. 23.

“Bought the juice, they call it, from a dealer at Rockridge. One hit fell down dead in front of his friends.”

Buhr is now apologizing for sharing the false story.

“You’d think even an amateur, small-town politician would know better than to repeat hearsay, because, upon further enquiry, I find that nothing happened at Rockridge, there was never laced vape juice, and what likely did happen was elsewhere and for other causes,” he said in a Feb. 2 bulletin posted on the village’s website.

Buhr said the rumour about the Rockridge student is possibly linked to the ongoing speculation following the death of 14-year-old Kyle Losse, whose parents told Black Press Media that Losse was found on the bathroom floor in their Delta home with a nicotine vape pen lying near his hand. However, a preliminary autopsy came back inconclusive as to what caused the death.

“There are a dozen versions [of the story] doing the rounds,” Buhr said.